Naomi McCarthy artist:writer:creative animateur

Bio

Australian born, Naomi McCarthy grew up travelling through England and Europe with her dad’s band. During these peripatetic early years she loved being in galleries and classrooms, to her they were a space of playful, creative encounter, providing a welcoming community even when she didn’t speak the local language. Pursuing her delight in art and in education she has an Undergraduate Degree in Fine Arts, a Graduate Diploma of Education and a Masters of Creative Writing. She currently works professionally in art and education.

Projects

Loving the interplay between image and word, Naomi specializes in projects that explore the relationship between the written and spoken word and the visual image. She is an expert in art appreciation as an embodied, emboldened, recursive creative practice and has an inter-disciplinary creative practice that spans across writing, visual arts, performance and professional development for art educators. Naomi is adept at facilitating creative encounters that ignite the curiosity of project participants and audiences alike.

A spectacular heartfelt public artwork

Creative collective, Dandelion Projects, of which Naomi is a founding member, won the Pat Parker Memorial Residency for Blacktown Art Centre, 2017. The winning project, Veil of Wishes, resulted in a major public art installation, exhibited in the floor to ceiling windows of the Max Webber Library, January 2018.

Naomi reflects on the project in this way: "I often imagine, especially just on dusk as the day is drawing to a close, a bubble of yearning gathering in the sky over the suburbs. For this project, we gathered up the secret wishes of people who live in the Blacktown district and created a digital text-based film. The film accompanied the glorious yellow veil of over 2000 tissue paper dandelions. Because, whilst considered a weed by some, a dandelion has the ability, with just a teaspoon of soil and a drop of rain, to pop up practically anywhere, resilient and cheerful. Dandelion Projects took this cheerful resilience and used this project to spread the seeds of creativity among project participants, including multicultural festival goers, Afghan, Chinese, Indian, Bhutanese community groups, women's and young women's leadership groups, local schools, friends, families and general public. The Veil also became part of Blacktown's International Women's Day Celebrations thanks to SydWest Multicultural Services. This project was a pleasure to deliver and a great opportunity to get to know people whilst sitting side by side creating beautiful, handcrafted dandelions. Individual dandelions which when joined with hundreds and hundreds of other dandelions created a spectacular celebration of people, place and creativity. Since the Veil of Wishes project came to an end and was de-installed from the Library - word has it that its sunny presence is still sorely missed.

Wings of Desire

interactive artwork - artist Naomi McCarthy

Wings of Desire

Interactive artwork - Strathfield Spring Fair 2016

Pop-Up Truth and Dare

Lost Paradise Festival - Artist Naomi McCarthy

Pop Up Truth and Dare - Lost Paradise Festival

30 December 2014 – 2 January 2015

Pop-Up Truth and Dare at the Lost Paradise Festival was the second iteration of Truth and Dare on the Dual Camino. Set within the beauty of Glenworth Valley, Truths and dares posed by the seven animateurs from our inaugural project have been specifically chosen to instigate fun and interaction among festivalgoers.

Truth and Dare on the Dual Caminos

Camino de Santiago - Dandelion Projects

15 September - 3 November 2014

The Inaugural Dandelion Project

Camino Walkers aka Pilgrims:

Naomi McCarthy -Walked the Camino Frances from St-Jean-Pied-De-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain

For Truth and Dare on the Dual Caminos, seven animateurs were enlisted to offer seven truths, seven dares and one double dare to be enacted by two pilgrims, one walking a Camino in daily life in Australia and one walking the Camino Frances to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Enlisting seven different animateurs meant that every day for seven weeks our two pilgrims were prepared to have their daily lives influenced in unpredictable ways by seven different sensibilities. The proffered Truths and Dares bundled into seven weekly offerings were unwrapped Monday morning of each week. Both pilgrims are known to have warm personalities and robust senses of humour although one of the pilgrims is by nature more reserved than the other. Both pilgrims had fun and experienced moments of revelation, pathos and connection; connection that may very well have been brought about by the willingness of the pilgrims to be open to people both like and unlike themselves.

Project Background: Truth or dare is a game for almost any age but is often most interesting to young people from mid to late primary school, through high school and into the early 20s. It is most engaging when people are still curious about each other in terms of the truth section and when they are testing boundaries and embarrassment levels in the dare section. Adults don't often play this game - maybe we have become less interested and curious about each other and maybe we are not so interested in testing the limits of our bravery in the dare section. Although, there is an on-line game of truth or dare for adults that is popular. Truth and Dare on the Dual Caminos sprouted from a desire to conflate a certain childlike gameness and sense of mischief to the endurance game of life, compressed within a nominated time frame. Seven weeks, seven truths and seven dares became the scaffold for the project.

Reflection

To complete myTruth and Dare on the Dual Camino Project. I answered, animateur, Phil Beadles final truth.

Are you Happy?

Finishing the camino in Santiago de Compostela - looking very happy ( back row of the photo below) and I was in that moment indeed happy, but I was also conflicted about transitioning out of pilgrim mode back into normal life. The beauty of the Camino is the simplicity of the aim, the easy and always available camaraderie, the exposure and immersion in nature, the opportunity to spend six - eight (or more) hours a day under the sky, following the contours of the land moving through the landscape at a very human pace. A calmness descends on you knowing that, it is all a privilege, a gift if you will. Knowing that it is a movable feast and that it too will finish is also important because it makes you take advantage of what is offered, it also allows you to walk away from anyone and anything that you don't like, except yourself. The one constant and inescapable truth - you take yourself with you wherever you go - my best advice about that one is to make friends with yourself, forgive your transgressions and in being generous about your own failings learn to be generous and forgiving to others. Open yourself to life, living it as a participant, be gracious in your attitude to what life offers, not distant and judgmental, which is a 'safe' and cowardly position. My take home lessons from the Camino: be brave; be kind; be open to what life offers; be thankful and give praise for the bounty of the world and being given a life to live. Be careful with tender hearts both our own and others and remember that our actions always count. All of them.

*Animateur: a person who enlivens or encourages something, especially a promoter of artistic projects.